We have these mutual friends we hang out with, I know the next time we are there it will come up because my buddys wife thought it was ridiculous that I backed out.

Out of the 200 or so registered users at least 5 of us have ended up after a long road of treatments, medication, and other surgeries having a testicle removed. So if she thinks its ridiculous let her know about the hundreds of men registered here going through hell and those of us who are missing a testicle because a doctor was afraid of losing a payday by telling the truth.

If the number seems small to her just think about how many people are reading this and afraid to post anything. There is no way of knowing how many men are out there reading this but afraid to tell their story. Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many people are out there that have no clue what’s going on and what’s happened to them - they are just taking the urologists word that something rare happened and they’ve never seen it before sorry for the bad luck and don’t even know how to find this site because they’ve never be told about PVPS even after “getting” it?

“So if she thinks its ridiculous let her know about the hundreds of men registered here going through hell and those of us who are missing a testicle because a doctor was afraid of losing a payday by telling the truth.”

Have her just read this thread. My wife and I are going through hell. We were pretty close once but in the last 8 years the degree of intimacy and joy in our lives had diminished significantly. I’m hurting typing this. I get angry daily about what happened to me. The cumulative effect of an 8 year cycle of pain and anger is to kill a relationship. It’s tragic. It’s horrible. I don’t really feel like a man anymore you know. I can’t fill that need for her or me because my junk is so messed up it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Sex is not fun anymore. You show me how many young couple could survive a marriage where one loses the ability to enjoy sex, to work without pain, to sit without pain, to have sex without pain. All because when asked point blank by me about pain, the one question I asked, my urologist said “1 in 1000, no 1 in 3000, I’ve never seen it and if it happens we can take care of it.”

And, again, the problem with the 1/20, 1/1000, 1/3000 is that the urological community, in general, has no solution if you’re that 1. Acceptable risks and collateral damage for the guys that knock down $5,000 on a Friday afternoon doing vasectomies, but horrible consequences for the unsuspecting public.

Thank God there are men like Dr. P. and Dr. Marks who have taken to trying to treat us, but the reality is that even the best have middling records of solving the damage caused in the first place.

I advise any men I speak with to stand firm and find other means of birth control (and I fully understand that the Pill has cancerous consequences if used long term).

My wife and I ended up with a post-reversal baby being born when we were nearly 43. We fretted the costs and risks for 9 months, but she’s been a total blessing the last 8-1/2 years. Risk of vasectomy is far worse than the risk of another child. Who knows, another child may end up working out just fine as it did for us unexpectedly.

Well said. Most are okay. Many are not. Some have their lives ruined/altered forever. Work, relationships, sex all impacted horribly because men are not told bad outcomes are a realistic possibility and once it happens, a bad outcome, they deny it and marginalize the sufferers

My story is similar. My wife wanted me to get a vasectomy and badgered me until I finally agreed to see a urologist. Supposedly the best urologist in the community, he totally oversold the procedure as “risk free.” The worst that would happen, he said, was an infection that would be cleared up by antibiotics.

I very reluctantly agreed. Never having surgery before, I was very naive. The surgery took place in a borrowed conference room. Waste baskets overflowing with bloody gauze littered the floor.

The pain started about two days after the procedure. There was no pain, then a sudden shot of pain like getting hit in the balls. It happened many times per day, especially when walking. Everything turned red, and drooped. The pain lasted three months. Thankfully, the pain finally subsided. The psychological impact is still with me 30 years later! The relationship with my wife suffered permanent damage from this episode, as she concluded that I was just making it all up.

DO NOT move ahead with this. Especially if it’s your wife wanting you to do it. It’s absolutely your right to decide how to achieve birth control. I sure wish I had just said “No,” and bought a large box of condoms.